Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Protosal:  Teamwork and Treason

If the Proposal titled “We Are Not Alone, now with proposal power!” failed, this Proposal does nothing.

If the Proposal titled “Don’t Dream It’s Over, with one hundred percent more proposal!” failed, this Proposal does nothing.

Add the following to the end (that is, before subrules) of the rule “We Are Not Alone”:

Every group has a non-negative number called it’s Treason Level.  If a Citizen communicates to any other Citizen that he is part of a group, via PM, e-mail, IRC, or any other online communication device, the second Citizen (the accuser) may accuse the first Citizen (the accused) of treason by way of posting the full text of the communication in a Story Post.  The accuser will then add the Treason Level of the concerned group to the accused Treason score. 

If, within 12 hours, the High-Programmer sees that a Citizen has made an accusation, and the accuser is in the same group as he is accusing the accused of, the High-Programmer may add the Treason Level of that group to the accuser’s Treason score.  The High-Programmer must then make a Story Post describing this. 

Whenever a Citizen’s group is revealed in a Story Post as set out in the last two paragraphs, and the citizen truly is a member of that group, the High-Programmer may, within 48 hours, revoke membership to that group.  If he does revoke membership to that group, he may then assign a new group to the Citizen, at the same time.  These changes are made by sending the Citizen involved a PM describing the changes.

The High-Programmer must add one line to the end of each subrule of the rule “We Are Not Alone.”  The format of the line is “The Treason Level of this group is x.”, where x is a valid Treason Level for the group.

Why:  When the groups gain ‘personalities’, that is, set each group up so that members of the same group may act similarly, we might want to team up.  So we can guess who is of what group through this method, with penalties for incorrect guesses.  I picture a conversation to be:

“Hey, I’m in group x, are you?”

With the response being one of:
*Nothing but a Story Post and a few more Treason points, or
*“Yes I am, let’s team up and pass this proposal which favors us, etc.”

The penalty given out by the High-Programmer makes it so that you can slip under the radar for accusing one of your own, but still do it and take the penalty if you’re willing to do so.

You could of course ‘reveal’ the wrong group, in an attempt to get another Citizen to confess membership to a group, and then turn them in if they do. 

The main thing that I want to ask my fellow Citizens for advice on is the wording of the ‘within 12 hours’ sentence.  It seems really confusing to me.

posted by h2g2guy at 28 Jul 2010 22:03:36 UTC Comments (4)

Comments

Qwazukee:

28-07-2010 23:11:17 UTC

What if the accused Citizen denies that the communication took place?

h2g2guy:

29-07-2010 04:10:26 UTC

I was thinking about that, and I thought we could go on the good faith of the PLAYERS* of Blognomic.  If you still think that we need enforcement of this rule, I can add a provision for using a voting system or something if the Citizen contests that the communication took place.

*The characters can be evil, but the players need not be, just like in any good RPG.

lilomar:

29-07-2010 13:09:46 UTC

Why do they have to communicate their allegiances to you before you can accuse them? I would simply make it possible to accuse a citizen of being in a group by story post. If it is confirmed, they are kicked out of their group and they gain treason points. if it is not confirmed, the accuser gains treason points. (False accusations of treason are treason!)

That way we don’t have to deal with HOW a citizen found out, they can just make the accusation. The penalty for false accusation should be high enough to discourage guessing.

h2g2guy:

29-07-2010 14:14:13 UTC

That is a very good point.  I’ve never played Paranoia before, but from what I’ve read, you need lots of proof in order to get someone summarily executed.  I haven’t read anything about that proof necessarily being legit, though.  And if the game is truly about paranoia, then making a false accusation will still raise suspicion about a particular player. 

Nevertheless, I’d still support a rule like that.  I’m still gonna let this protosal simmer a bit and see if anyone who really likes the rule can fix my ‘within 12 hours’ sentence.  If you want to propose your version before that happens, I’ll just vote for that and forgo posting my own version.

Of course, the decision for what I should do is always within your control, o great High-Programmer!